Hey all. I said I was going to do this a long time ago. This is going to be a combination park review / park planning guide / industry overview / I'm just going to rave for a bit type guide. I'm attempting to take some inspiration from ParkScope's amazing "30 Never Built Attraction Series" and not taking any inspiration from most trip reports, which talk more about manufactured family drama than parks. I'm going to reach for wit and probably end up closer to snark or cynicism. It's going to be a long, unedited write, so you'll be able to see my "English for Engineers" writing style at work. Don't expect Shakespeare or Anna Kendrick. Off we go!
Last month, I made a two-thirds day trip over to Tokyo DisneySea in the middle of a solo trip to Tokyo. Why only 2/3rds of a day? During my poor last-minute planning of my trip, I decided that I wasn't going to go to Tokyo Disney. I'm a huge theme park fan, but I was so worried about wasting what little time I had in Japan. Plus, I felt awkward about traveling across the world to go to a theme park. Why am I saying all of this? To prove a point: do what you want on vacation and forget about the haters. Life is too short to feel awkward on vacation. So yeah, looking back, it was poor logic. I ended up having too much time in Tokyo and DisneySea proved far too tempting. It would've been a full day, but a friend showed up in Tokyo last minute and wanted to do lunch. I'm not enough of a sociopath to put the Mouse ahead of that.
Put on some tunes and let's get this started.
Planning a Trip to Tokyo
Skip this if you don't really care how to plan a trip to Tokyo!
From what I've seen in the theme park community, Tokyo Disney has always seemed like the most inaccessible set of parks in the world. I've heard of more people going to Disneyland Paris than Tokyo. Tokyo Disney is surprisingly accessible if you're willing to be smart about it. Plus, Tokyo is an amazing city with an unbelievable foodie culture (more Michelin stars than any other city! more restaurants than any other city!) and a fascinating culture (arcades! anime! robots! samurais!). It's also not as expensive as you may think. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's no more expensive than any other major international destination. The key is that you have to be smart about planning your trip. Most of the American travel sites are not as optimized for Japanese travel.
Flights
(Disclaimer: I had a boatload of miles from my past life as a pseudo-consultant to help pay for part of my ticket. I still had to find a good ticket to book, so I feel like I can talk about this authoritatively. Plus, the cash tickets I saw were still not very expensive. I was seeing tickets from Tokyo that were on-par with what I pay from Cali->Midwest).
Unless you're willing to stowaway on the back of a plane, you have to pay for a "chair" (I'm convinced we need legal definitions for that word like we do sliced cheese) on an airplane. Tokyo is a major airport hub, so tickets are easy to get access to. Here are a quick set of things I learned while I was booking tickets.
* If you can, fly out of Canada. I don't know why tickets are cheaper, but they are. Tickets from Toronto were easily 40% cheaper. The black magic of the airline gods.
* If you can buy tickets with miles, it's cheaper. You can buy miles to make up any shortfalls. Tickets (especially business class and above) are seemingly cheaper when you book in miles. Again, the will of the airline gods.
* In order to help divine the will of the airline gods, I actually had some experts show me which tickets I should book. I won't say the service name, but I'll say that it was a crowd-sourced flight search startup. They found me a business class ticket that was on-par with the economy tickets I found and was 5x cheaper than the business class tickets I could find myself. Seriously, if you can afford it, buy business class. Being able to lay down on a fifteen hour flight is completely worth it.
Hotels
Yeah, back to the bullet points.
* Western-branded hotels are all more expensive than they are in the States. Add a single star to every American chain and use that to determine prices. So, for example, if you think Best Western is a 3-star hotel with a 3-star price tag, that means that Best Western Tokyo is at least a 4-star hotel with at least a 4-star price tag. For most part, I'd say that
* You'll want to book "business hotels" (generic term for Japanese hotels). That also means you can't use Expedia or Travelocity or the like because they're American websites that book American hotel chains. Look for European sites like Booking.com. The hotels are usually on-par with American hotels and there's no language barrier if you book in a larger hotel.
* The Disney hotels are ridiculously scary expensive. Add a zero to your mortgage payment and that's the downpayment on one night at Hotel MiraCosta. It's still my life's intention to pull a John Dillinger and use the money to book a night at MiraCosta.
* Any hotel near the subway will work.
* I stayed in a hostel. Hostels are a huge thing outside of the US. They're ridiculously cheap, you can get private rooms, there's people of all ages. It was my first experience and I'd recommend it, especially if you're traveling alone. I was in the Khohan chain of hostels and was very pleased.
Transportation
Tokyo transit goes everywhere. Tokyo Disney is on the subway. I'm not going to attempt to describe Tokyo transit because Google exists. Just know that if your hotel is near the subway, you can get anywhere in the city. The subway can be confusing, even with all of the English signage. You'll want to use Google Maps to get around.
Language, Money + the rest
* There's tons of English everywhere. All the subway signs are in English. All of Tokyo Disney's signs are in English (more so than Japanese really). Menus everywhere have pictures. I had absolutely no language issues and I only speak 3 words of Japanese.
* I've heard that 7-11 is the "like the save point in an RPG game" (source unknown). It's true. They have good cheap food and foreign ATMs. I never used my credit card and just withdrew cash every day at my local 7-11. Actually, lies. I used my credit card exclusively in Tokyo Disney because they take cash everywhere.
Cool, that's planning a Tokyo trip in like 1000 words. Ask me questions if you want more info and I'll update my post!
The Resort
Tokyo Disney is two theme parks, some hotels, Ikespari Shopping District, and a monorail to tie it all together. Because I'm an obsessive theme park fan, I'm going to talk about everything, starting with Ikespari.
Ikespari
This is going to be super short. No pictures. I only walked through part of the mall after the parks had closed, so I could be horribly wrong about the district. Pretty sure I'm not, but you never know.
Aside: I spent Thanksgiving weekend at Disney Springs and I think that area shows what Disney does well and what they do poorly for their Downtown Disney shopping lands. The Marketplace is, and always has been, great. Lots of Disney stores with exclusive Disney merchandise. It's a nice place to walk around. The Landing, their restaurant district, is another home-run. Tons of unique restaurants with interesting decor and creative food choices. A couple well-known famous NYC restaurants that are way more approachable. Then, comes Town Center and the West Side. Town Center is a nicely themed shopping mall. Most of the stores have near-identical layouts and selection to the stores at my local mall. And then there's the West Side, which doesn't have theming or stores. It's just a bunch of generic boxes housing a bunch of pop-up stores. Seriously, there's a line of demarkation where Disney Springs ends and the "other buildings" begin.
I say all of that because Disney hasn't taken any of those lessons to heart in Ikispari. My home shopping mall has about as much charm as this place. I saw a T.G.I Fridays complete with ads on the windows and a generic box storefront. I mean, there's a giant Disney Store, but you need more than that.
Monorail
The single nicest monorail I've ever been on. Enough said. I was a little miffed that they charge for it, but I'm not going to complain. It added to the experience and really hyped me up. It brings up an interesting question for the Orlando parks. If they made the monorail experience better, would you pay for it? Each round trip was a little less than $2 - around what you would pay for any subway trip in Tokyo. The monorail was never insanely busy and the stations were ridiculously well staffed, clean, and intelligently laid out.